When I called Pat Fitzgerald the grinch of signing day, he politely demurred. And then he got rolling.

"I don't think I'm the grinch," he said the day after mocking the whole signing day hullabaloo in media reports. "I just think we should cut to the chase about what yesterday was really about.

"It's about young men solidifying their future," he said during a phone conversation from Columbus, Ohio, where he and his staff were speaking at a coaches convention. "We're overhyping the wrong things. ... We're glorifying the committing and recommitting and the hat dances. What are we doing?"